Errant-mel

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Sheri
@Sheri

That Time Peter Molyneux Apotheosized a Scottish Teenager*

*and then never actually paid him the money he was promised

so Curiosity: What's Inside the Cube? was a HELL of a game. or, "experiment" according to its lead designer peter molyneux

The black and green cube floating against a stark white room that is Curiosity: What's Inside the Cube?

back in 2012, pete and his friends went 'what if people hit blocks? imagine.' as a test to see how folks would collaborate on a cumulative goal:

solve fun little puzzles to break the billions of small cubes, surrounding a prize inside which only one player can claim, something quote, "truly amazing, absolutely unique"

would people compete by default, would they work together? would factions form of peoples trying to break certain spots of the cube faster?

or would they spend around $62,000 USD in today's money in a stunt gacha games could only dream of being bold enough to pull?

Polygon article from 2012 by Alexa Ray Corriea, linked above. The text reads: "Molyneux told GamesRadar that he is interested in the psychology of social games, and is curious how the player who cracks the cube will share the news. "How will this person prove it? That in itself becomes a fascinating aspect of this experiment," he said. "It's an insane amount of money," he said of the diamond chisel. "This is not a money-making exercise. It is a test about the psychology of monetisation."

motherfucker really looked at a journalist dead in the soul and said "it's not about the money, it's about sending a message"

and, largely, send messages people did. specifically swear words and titty art.

(sadly, the image examples were deleted, and that's probably for the best.)

anyways. people dug away at it for a couple of months, until finally a teenager in Scotland opened the last cube. he was the winner! congrats, bud!

or, rather, i'm sorry.

now, i'm not going to post the guy's name or face here, cuz while reading up on this whole thing, he's made it pretty clear he's a bit done and over this. actually, his exact words were:

"I don't care. Really. Like, whatever."

hell yea bud. so i'll be citing a lot of information from this eurogamer interview with him, just like, don't bother the guy, yeah? he's been through enough dealing with peter's bullshit. on that note,

A screengrab from a 22cans video. Peter in a plain white room, saying: "...life changing, you will have fame you will have fortune and you will have..."

In my humble opinion, Peter Molyneux is a liar and a con man.

"Every time people spend money on Godus, you will get a small piece of that pie."

the prize for getting to the center of the tootsie pop was becoming God and revenue sharing for a video game they hadn't released yet. and as a matter of fact-

still haven't actually released!

A screengrab of a promo image for Godus on Steam. A low-poly flat color aesthetic village, with a very... questionable depiction of 'new peoples' you can discover.

Godus was a weird, ethnocentric thing that made $450,000 on Kickstarter back in 2012 and now, over a decade later, has a barely functional freemium mobile game and an early access PC hell to show for itself

the winner of curiosity hasn't seen a dime. he has no god powers. the game doesn't exist in a medium for him to be able to claim any promised wealth, but they sure did rack in that kickstarter and microtransaction money, huh?

Article from The Guardian by Laura Kate Dale in 2015. The headline reads: "Peter Molyneux interview: 'It's over, I will not speak to the press again'. The veteran game designer is at the centre of a raging controversy over his new game Godus. He says he is finished with the press."

peter threw a temper tantrum and said it's not his fault his company fired the person who was supposed to pay the winner his prize. even though, again, it's one person. you could just call the kid yourself.

though i guess he's a bit busy, since he's already moved onto his next project by the way!

A Verge article titled "Peter Molyneux's NFT game will make being nice cost real money. A business simulator that's also a business, circa 2021 by Adi Robertson.

i'm sure that's going just great for him!

actually, we should take a moment to talk about pete.

he actually made a text-based business simulator way back in his day, called The Entrepreneur, and it failed miserably. so he used the fact that he was mistaken for a representative for a "human capital firm" whatever the FUCK that means to lie his way into snagging free computers and helping design a database system for the amiga

he literally just bullshitted his way through the deal. he got lucky. cuz he was mistaken for a rich white guy, and thus became a rich white guy himself.

look, i like Fable y'all, but peter molyneux is a scumbag.

Continued quotation from The Guardian article: “It’s not that we backed away from the idea, I still love the idea and I still absolutely love the fact it was someone British that won it, I still love the fact that Bryan is young and it’s going to be a life changing experience for him. That said, it is inexcusable that someone from 22Cans didn’t stay in contact with him. It’s just incompetence to be honest with you.”

fucking CREEP. "someone from 22cans"

Landing page on Google for 22cans. The description reads: "22cans was founded in 2012 by industry legend, and creator of the God Game genre, Peter Molyneux. Peter's dream was to hand-craft a team of the 22 most..."

YOU'RE FROM 22CANS! YOU "INDUSTRY LEGEND" YOU.

pick up the phone. now. just pay the kid some of the kickstarter funds you never used to finish the game, so he can get a portion of the "money spent on Godus" like you promised. or just out of pocket! since it's been a decade and all, it only seems fucking fair!

it's not hard. call it a 'charitable donation' and write it off on your taxes or somethin, or is that not subversive enough for you?

hey, at least devolver digital used the disinterested kid's story for a PR bump so that was nice for them.

anyways, i guess we'll add this one to the history books as another example of a british man promising a scottish youth freedom and riches, and very much not following through

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in reply to @Sheri's post:

ryusui
@ryusui

it's kind of an achievement that "the franchise is being rebooted without the involvement of its original creator" can only be described as a selling point for the new Fable

makes me curious who has the rights to Black & White

and The Movies, for that matter

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ahksworld
@ahksworld

Oh man I played this cube game back when it was a huge thing. I was really into it until the microtransactions started happening, then I gave up and never touched it again... ultimately not surprised to see that this is how it ended

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spitfire
@spitfire

i also played the game back in 2012/2013(?), randomly stumbled upon it in the android market and quit not too long after. i remember the purchasable upgrades made it feel incredibly unfair, and i stopped playing after i failed at all my attempts to "cheat in" the ingame currency (i think it was all server-side anyway so it couldn't have possibly worked)

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Obol
@Obol

He's credited with creating the genre because of Populous (Bullfrog, 1989), not Black & White. While there are a few earlier games that came to be regarded as god games, Populous is the one that defined and popularized the genre.

(Part of why his con was successful for so long is because Bullfrog had a string of hugely influential games in the '90s and early '00s, and he had some involvement in nearly all of them, which he then Stan Lee'd into more fame and influence.)

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